Quality posts incoming... 🙄

If it's mandatory for it to be enabled to be able to access the MP portion of the game then I think it's a good idea. Sure... there might be some performance hit, but unless your are cheating then that is better than having to deal with the cheats. I rarely play MP games so my experience is limited, but I also still see a lot of complaints about cheating so I don't know how effective any of the current solutions are. Do people just hold the view that it's similar to DRM in that there will always be people who circumvent it, so just don't bother with anti cheat solutions as they are a waste of dev resources and increase the chance of performance/stability issues in the games?

I am really guessing this is really all about the close integration of XBOX into the Windows 10 eco system vs outside games. But I realize, can be utilized by non Xbox developers and games.

I don't cheat don't mod games so I really don't mind this, for me I really hope it works and they get rid of the cheaters. I sometimes wonder if games should have a cheat mode which separates them from none cheaters so that the cheaters could play and mod together.

fantaskarsef:

As I read it from WL's post earlier they can flag which parts need it and which parts / games don't fancy that cheat protection. So technically it's up to the game dev, although we know it's not always that easy. I never played a single round of GTA5 online and would still run mods with the risk of being banned for nothing, just because the devs themselves are stupid enough to not seperate normal and online play modes properly. I can only imagine m$ has the plan to offer some tool against cheaters that is supposed to strengthen windows / UWP games, but I can't see that working. All that data logging is useless, I'm fairly sure some handy cheaters can circumvent that service anyway. What's left are the people not cheating but still giving m$ their data, which does nothing for the user at all. And if you can turn it off or it's off by default, it makes even less sense to ever activate it, especially if I'd be a cheater. Stupid idea... Only time can tell if it's another brilliant idea like game mode (which is practically countering it's own purpose for many people), or if it even catches a single cheater.

Oh ok then thanks for the insight. The only multiplayer game that I play is Diablo 3 not sure if Blizzard would even want to use it for their games since they have their ways of doing things. Plus there might be some game devs that might not be interested in MS's help so they wont use it. Plus this might not apply to games that have been released for years and still have servers for online play. So you are correct in saying that its up to the game dev at the end of the day. Plus some game Devs offer ways to show proof of cheating by the users themselves so to me this anti-cheat tool by MS is useless but only time will tell that I am wrong.

Barry J:

I don't cheat don't mod games so I really don't mind this, for me I really hope it works and they get rid of the cheaters. I sometimes wonder if games should have a cheat mode which separates them from none cheaters so that the cheaters could play and mod together.

Are there not a good amount of cheaters who only do it to cause carnage and ruin games? They would no doubt shun the cheaters only games completely. Also, I see it a bit like having a sports organisation where no one is drug tested, some would join but there would still be a lot who would want that extra advantage and would rather continue subtly cheating.

Ryu5uzaku:

Too much data. It becomes hard to use really. I think it would be more selective what they collect since collecting everything would be bad.

I always had the suspicion this was the very reason that "private" browsing functionality was added to browsers... to remove the need to also look through and log all the normal internet traffic... now users explicitly tell them exactly what they don't want them to know... which makes it all the more interesting to them 😉

I enabled it a bit and there was nothing out of ordinary. Its off again though..

I think this is stupid in a lot of ways but the main reason being.... it's not an OS job to catch cheaters..... Having this feature at the OS lvl is "overkill" and completely inappropriate as your OS would be working against u (if u were a cheater)... ? and to be really useful to devs without a ton of false positives, it should be extremely configurable for each game... and we know "configurable" and "MicroSoft" don't belong to the same sentence :P

I have a crazy thought do server side auth with encrypted communications and 99% of cheats are over. When you patch the game change the salt on the encryption key. Lazy arse game developers.

cryohellinc:

You sound like a cheater.

Sorry but after being falsely accused in 3 different games in past 15 years I am VERY DISTRUSTFULL to any kind of anticheat that can have false positives because in majority situation you need to invest a lot of time and/or cost to convince otherwise. In majority titles especialy asian origin you just get plainly banned without even providing any proof. Not that I am against anticheats, especialy in multiplayer titles, but it STINKS to be in that 0.1-1% that get burned.

Redemption80:

If it's mandatory for it to be enabled to be able to access the MP portion of the game then I think it's a good idea. Sure... there might be some performance hit, but unless your are cheating then that is better than having to deal with the cheats. I rarely play MP games so my experience is limited, but I also still see a lot of complaints about cheating so I don't know how effective any of the current solutions are. Do people just hold the view that it's similar to DRM in that there will always be people who circumvent it, so just don't bother with anti cheat solutions as they are a waste of dev resources and increase the chance of performance/stability issues in the games?

That's my take on it. Players are too accusation happy these days though. If you've got proof it's one thing but if not I think it's as bad as actual cheaters. Possibly worse since they're damaging someone's reputation and their account without stopping to think about it.

JamesSneed:

I have a crazy thought do server side auth with encrypted communications and 99% of cheats are over. When you patch the game change the salt on the encryption key. Lazy arse game developers.

Agreed. The line of thinking is probably something like this: Why do server side anti-cheat when we can give players a placebo and collect data at the same time?

I prefer it when games have strict anti-cheat systems, but also gives you servers that are "play at your own risk". That way, cheaters get to do whatever they want without ruining everyone else's experience. Cheaters are like pirates: it doesn't matter how much you hate them or how much they're ruining things for everyone else, they're always going to be there. They're also similar in the sense that the companies want to eliminate them, but as a result, they often end up punishing the honest customers, and the cheaters/pirates end up winning. As counter-intuitive as it sounds, the only way to get rid of them is to make it easier for them to do what they want. Don't use layers of DRMs. Don't use heavy encryption. Give the players a server for them to be reckless. I know of people who pirate media because it's a more convenient experience. Cheaters cheat because they want to take the easy way out and get all the perks without any of the effort (after all, how is cheating fun when the computer does all the work?). When you have both cheat-allowed servers and anti-cheat servers, the cheaters aren't going to waste their time playing in the anti-cheat servers if it means getting serious penalties; they'd rather play in a place where they can do whatever they want consequence-free. As a result, the honest players get what they want and nobody should rightfully be able to cry wolf every time they lose.

Anything to catch cheaters, but what's stopping them from collecting additional data?

this is just plain creepy. i dislike cheaters as much as the next guy...somehow i don't think this will stop bot-play, gold mining, or account hacking. so by giving a vague definition of cheating, it allows for a more aggressive sampling of data. btw... there is no such thing as "too much data"...i live near at least six very large multi-billion dollar companies that all they do is data mine. and sell software/services to the NSA as well. and the biggest data miner of them all is Google.

TieSKey:

I think this is stupid in a lot of ways but the main reason being.... it's not an OS job to catch cheaters..... Having this feature at the OS lvl is "overkill" and completely inappropriate as your OS would be working against u (if u were a cheater)... ? and to be really useful to devs without a ton of false positives, it should be extremely configurable for each game... and we know "configurable" and "MicroSoft" don't belong to the same sentence 😛

Not only that. That end users like ourselves who live stream and record game play footage can help catch cheaters as well because game devs welcome the help of their users of their online service to help report cheaters and use the clip in the form of a video or still shot as evidence. Plus at the end of the day its up to the game dev to accept MS's help or not to catch cheaters. Plus alot of false positives would be useless and game devs do not have the time to sort through all of that data any way.

It's only for MS store games. If MS wants to have something like VAC everyone acts worried about privacy. All anti-cheat systems scan your computer and none of them can stop everything. MS doesn't need to announce new features to add more spying capabilities - they can do that at will, and don't need to announce it to the world or ask for permission. The idea that MS is trying to "sneak in" more data collection doesn't make sense.

Yea, I hate cheaters. Especially those with better rigs than mine that get better performance/game play. And I'm sure the cheaters won't be able to circumvent it...in about a day! Total waste of time/money imo.

WareTernal:

It's only for MS store games. If MS wants to have something like VAC everyone acts worried about privacy. All anti-cheat systems scan your computer and none of them can stop everything. MS doesn't need to announce new features to add more spying capabilities - they can do that at will, and don't need to announce it to the world or ask for permission. The idea that MS is trying to "sneak in" more data collection doesn't make sense.

OK if its for MS games only then we have really nothing to worry about since most of us do not purchase games from the MS store. As I said before game devs and Steam have their own version of anti-cheat scanners such as VAC.

Of course it's just MS store games, as that is what the article states lol. Does stuff like VAC etc... work though, as all i still hear people complaining about cheating, i've even saw people with multiple platforms pick the console version over the PC version. That suggests to me the problem still exists.